Ellis Island: visiting the Immigration Museum

When we were in New York City, we decided to buy the New York Pass since it includes so many attractions for free or at discount prices. We decided to go on a cruise to see the Statue of Liberty and the Immigration Museum on Ellis Island, which was free with the New York Pass. The New York Pass allows a visit to Liberty Island. If you want to go up to the crown, you have to pay extra, and these tickets are apparently sell out quite quickly, so you have to go early!

Getting to Ellis Island

Statue Cruises offer the short ferry ride to get to Liberty Island and Ellis Island, and this was also free on the New York Pass. The Statue Cruises departs from Battery Park in New York. There is a departure every 25 minutes. Since it was the week after the 4th of July, it was probably busier than it would normally be. Although the lines to get onto the cruise was quite long, the pace at which we moved was fast, and we boarded the boat in no time.

The trip to Ellis Island

Seeing New York from the water gives it an entirely different perspective!

New York as seen from onboard the ferry

The first stop on the State Cruises trip is Liberty Island featuring the Statue of Liberty. Liberty Island was about 25 minutes away from Battery Park. When we neared Liberty Island, we could we could see the long, long lines of people waiting to get to the Statue of Liberty. We didn’t want to go inside and see the view from the top, so we decided not to get off on Liberty Island.

We stayed on the boat until we got to the second stop on the cruise, which is Ellis Island.

The Ellis Island Immigration Museum

From Liberty Island to Ellis Island only took about 20 minutes by boat. Ellis Island houses the Ellis Island Immigration Museum. Upon entry into the Museum, you are given a handset with headphones. This is quite educational as you can walk from exhibit to exhibit and listen to the commentary on each of them. I found the whole museum fascinating – it covered every aspect of immigration you can think of and also covers the history of immigrants to the USA. Listening to all the commentary and finishing every exhibit would take at least 3-4 hours. We did not have that much time since the last boat back to New York City was leaving around 17:15. Therefore, we had to select the exhibits we found most interesting and wanted to learn about a bit more.

Inside the museum there are toilets and outside there is a little restaurant/kiosk selling food. You can also buy souvenirs from a shop.

Immigration Museum Display

Adults will probably enjoy this museum more than children because of the topic. One can easily spend a whole day here if you are not in a hurry.

Getting back to New York

Unfortunately after finishing browsing the exhibits, the line to get on a boat to get back to New York was super long. And to make matters worse, the boats just did not stop at Ellis Island. Everyone was getting more and more restless and eventually, after a 90-minute wait, one of the boats stopped at Ellis Island. Needless to say it was quite full, but at least we got back safe and sound after a short 10 minute cruise back to Battery Park.

Despite the long wait to get back on a boat and back to New York, I enjoyed the short ferry ride to Ellis Island and back, as well as visiting the Museum. The displays were very informative and comprehensive and I left knowing much more than before.

Have you ever been to the Ellis Island Immigration Museum before? What was the highlights of your visit there? Were there any low lights for you?